About this Report
Public procurement has always been the way that governments provide essential services to people, by obtaining the goods and services that allow government to function: from computers and software to fire trucks and road salt. Recently, governments are increasingly interested in making procurement faster, more flexible, more inclusive, and easier to understand.They are also interested in enabling a greater diversity of firms to participate in the development of ideas that could help governments solve pressing issues.
As innovation procurement practices emerge and continue to be tested by practitioners inside and outside of government, we aim to use this research to improve the understanding of innovation procurement in Canada and how it has been put into practice. As federal, provincial, and municipal governments work to adopt new approaches, this research highlights what space there is for experimentation in procurement processes. What are the opportunities in building innovation procurement practices and what are the challenges?
This report will support the Municipal Innovation Exchange (the MIX) and its work on innovation procurement. The MIX is an emerging virtual centre of excellence developed by the Cities of Guelph, London and Barrie, as well as MaRS Discovery District. The MIX is working to run innovation procurement challenges in each city, explore multi-city procurement challenges, conduct policy research, develop a peer-network of municipalities, and codify learnings into a best practice Municipal Innovation Procurement Framework. The MIX benefits from the support of various partners along the innovation pipeline including the Guelph Lab and Innovation Guelph. This report was commissioned by MaRS Discovery District to support the work of the MIX.
Read this report to help you:
- Understand how governments and procurement experts are talking about innovation procurement across the globe; how it is being described in different sectors and how it is being applied in practice.
- Glean insight into the opportunities and barriers faced by policymakers, academics, consultants, procurement experts, and companies that are working to make innovation procurement more effective.